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Coast Guard. Now is the time to put all your words and promises that you care about rape survivors and put it into action. Let see how this case is handled. Let see if the Coast Guard is true to their words. America is watching.

Way to familiar to me! The entire command is guilty of not protecting her and all should be prosecuted for dereliction of duty. Article 92 of the UCMJ. The command knowingly and willfully neglected their duty to follow up on a violent threat and act of violence to a service member under their command!

To the guy who says he was there when the rape happened at the unit. Why didn’t you have the courage or honor to stand up and say something. I found that rather humorous that now you say something over the Internet. If you support the victim now why didn’t you then

I ca not speak for the person that was there and did not help her but I can talk about the psychological reasons behind why people do not step in to help.

We live in a society where we are often told to ‘mind our own business’. I used to intern at a domestic violence shelter and often wondered why it took years for anyone to ever get involved. Did the neighbors not hear the screams? Why didn’t anyone call the cops? Why didn’t anyone step in to stop the abuse?

In recent news we hear about high school kids in Steubenville OH, Torrington CT and Saratoga CA among dozens of other cities across the US where teenage girls are drugged and raped at high school parties. In every single one of those cases it was done in public among other party goers. Instead of the other kids stepping in and putting and stop to it (and call the police) they took out their phones and started taking pictures of and recording the rape. Instead of showing the evidence to the police they post it on social media to make fun of the victim.

We are often faced with people that need our help yet most of us choose not to get involved. I am equally as guilty. Yesterday I saw a young woman on the side of a very busy section of the highway with her car broken down. Did I stop and help her? No. I and hundreds of other cars kept on driving even as guilt was being built up inside me.

At one of my first jobs while still in high school we had a supervisor that bullied his employees. While the right thing to do was to speak up and tell him he should not speak to anyone in that manner nobody ever spoke up to him. When he went on his bullying attack we all ran away and tried to distance ourselves from the victim of the day as to not piss off the supervisor even more.

Gregg Marsili was the Executive Officer of the base. Everyone else was under him. Was the witness a non-rate that wanted to speak up? I can’t imagine it going very well when an E-2 or E-3 try to tell a Chief not to act a certain way. Even if he was a petty officer he is still less in lower rank than a Chief. I am sure that they were probably scared as well. Perhaps it took him years to realize what was going on. He might very well have been part of the group that abused this poor woman and it took a major life change for him to realize what he did was wrong. I hear from many men that once they have a daughter that their perspective of how women should be treated and whats wrong and what is right drastically changes. Maybe he now has a daughter or maybe he met a woman that was raped or maybe his sister or friend became a victim and it helped him see things from the victim’s perspective.

By Coast Guard policy when she reported that she was threatened to be thrown overboard he should have reported it to his command and to CGIS to have it investigated. He also should have had CGIS investigate the rape case. He did not. Instead he wrote her up for it.

With all the media attention on rape in the military it should be to no one’s surprise that the Coast Guard thinks that rape is a joke but Chief Marsili took it to a whole other level.

I think that everyone that loves America and support our military should be reading this page.

Never. You are so quick to criticize someone for not stepping up to help this service member yet I do not see anything that you have done to help her? I signed the petition and plan on donating money. I feel that I should be doing more but don’t really know what. What exactly can we do? We can not exactly go back in time and change things. I am a former Coastie and reading things like this saddens me because I know how bad some commands are. I think that everyone that cares about the Coast Guard should be pissed off. Gregg Marsili you are a disgrace to the U.S Coast Guard